A US federal judge has thrown out Quentin Tarantino's lawsuit against the website Gawker for linking to his screenplay for the subsequently abandoned western The Hateful Eight. However, US district court judge John F Walter yesterday invited the film-maker to refile his case by 1 May, signalling that the legal battle is far from over.

In his copyright suit for contributory infringement, Tarantino claimed Gawker "crossed the journalistic line" when it linked to a leaked copy of the 146-page screenplay in January. But Walter said the director had so far failed to make his case.

"Nowhere in these paragraphs, or anywhere else in the complaint, does plaintiff allege a single act of direct infringement committed by any member of the general public that would support plaintiff's claim for contributory infringement," he said. "Instead, plaintiff merely speculates that some direct infringement must have taken place."

Tarantino was left seething in January when the draft screenplay for his new film was leaked by an unnamed Hollywood agent. He subsequently declared the project defunct, though a public reading of the script at the weekend in Los Angeles suggests the project is far from dead.

A story of bounty hunters transporting prisoners through 19th-century Wyoming, The Hateful Eight has been likened to the Oscar-winning film-maker's early work by the Guardian's John Patterson. In a review of Saturday's script reading at the United Artists theatre in LA, the critic wrote: "What we see tonight is more reminiscent of Reservoir Dogs than of Tarantino's more sprawling recent work. Two locations, both claustrophobic and teeming with mutual suspicion and recrimination, with much occurring off-screen or in flashback."

The script reading featured Walton Goggins, James Remar, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Amber Tamblyn and Bruce Dern, as well as Tarantino regular Samuel L Jackson. It is not known which actors will make the final cast, though agents for Madsen and Dern were publicly accused of leaking the script by its architect in January.